The Draft Kings website organized on a laptop in New Hyde Park, New York, USA, on Wednesday, September 17, 2025. Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images Betting on sports outcomes has skyrocketed in the 2020s, but recent surveys show how widespread the game has become for Generation Z. A survey of retail investors published in August by Betterment, an investment advisory platform, found that 66% of Generation Z investors participate in sports betting. The Bank of America Institute found in a September report that Generation Z accounted for nearly 50% of all online betting activity in July, during the height of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, outnumbering millennials for the first time. “It’s more unusual for someone to not have, for example, a Kalshi, DraftKings account… than it is to have one,” said Cynthia Grant, vice president of clinical at Birches Health, which offers online therapy for online gambling addiction recovery. “It’s part of the experience of watching sports now.” Sports betting surged after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 allowed state-licensed sportsbooks, which have since spread to 30 states. The introduction of sports-related event contracts in prediction markets (which claim they are financial transactions, not bets) in early 2025 further expanded access to other states without legalized sportsbooks and to those under 21 years of age. Now, the proliferation of sports betting has many financial and mental health advisors nervous. The average user in both the sports betting and prediction markets loses money, and trying to recoup losses puts users in even deeper financial holes, experts warn. Unsurprisingly, those who lose the most are at greatest risk of detrimental mental health outcomes. Gambling as an investment The Bank of America Institute survey found that Generation Z was twice as likely to view sports betting as a type of investment, compared to 20% of respondents overall. In the case of prediction markets alone, respondents generally saw them as a form of investing, but those numbers were again higher for Gen Z. In Betterment’s survey of retail investors, 52% of Gen Z respondents said they moved money originally intended for investment into sports betting, while another 26% saw betting as part of their long-term financial strategy. Management at sportsbooks DraftKings and FanDuel often say their products are entertainment, not investments. Prediction market platforms say event contracts, regardless of category, are a financial derivative. Dan Egan, Betterment’s chief investment and behavioral finance officer, said sports betting is increasingly appearing alongside traditional investing on the same app or device, helping drive the partnership. The combination is concerning because of the highly active behavior required to manage sports betting, as opposed to a long-term investment, Egan said. “It’s not an asset that grows with the economy, that gets better as time goes on, that has a positive expected return and that you can sit with and not have to do anything,” he said. “It’s exactly the opposite.” Bank of America also found that the median deposit account balance of households that use online gambling was 59% of the balance of those who did not. An August survey by BadCredit found that 44% of respondents started trading on prediction market platforms in hopes of earning additional income. This is despite the fact that the majority of users of the sports betting and prediction market lose money. “People tend to tell others how much money they’ve made,” said Erica Sandberg, a consumer finance expert at BadCredit. “If you have people around you saying, ‘I just made $300 in five minutes on this platform,’ you’re going to hear about it. You’re not going to hear that they lost $800 last month.” Student woman, fatigue with headache and college exhaustion, stress from work deadline or studying for exam in library. Campus, university and study tired with scholarship problems and mental health painPeopleimages | Stock | Getty ImagesMental Health Concerns How a sports betting addiction develops and when it reaches the point where treatment is needed varies by individual. But there are common warning signs, Grant said. “It infiltrates the way they function in the world, how they interact with their peers, how they interact with their family,” he said. “They lose time at work, they lose time at school. So when you start to see what we clinically call ‘functional impairment,’ that there are things that interfere with the way they try to navigate the world, that’s when we really start to see how this is becoming a problem.” It’s no surprise that young people are more likely to accept sports bets, as biological development creates a greater appetite for risk, said Amaura Kemmerer of UWill, a mental health and wellness provider that helps support more than four million students at 500 institutions around the world. Consequences often emerge long before clinical treatment. Even gamblers who are only dabbling and “do it occasionally… still have predictable negative effects on academics,” Kemmerer said, noting the impact sports betting is having on Gen Z college students. As a result, the perfect place to help combat the negative effects of gambling is on college campuses, both Kemmerer and Grant said, noting that on-campus counseling services should treat it as they would other types of addiction. The betting platforms themselves have tried to mitigate the risks. All regulated bookmakers and prediction markets have age verification tools. FanDuel and DraftKings allow users to set time limits or self-imposed deposits. FanDuel also imposes monthly deposit limits on accounts of users under 26 years of age. Polymarket on Wednesday announced optional self-imposed limits and a partnership with Birches Health to give users access to mental health resources. Kalshi does the same, as well as directing users ages 18 to 21 to risk management programs after making their first trades. He donated $2 million in May to the National Council on Problem Gambling. “We have prioritized making Kalshi the safest place for people to trade,” spokesperson Elisabeth Diana said in a statement. The experts stressed that not all forms of sports betting are harmful, but stressed that the motivation and frequency must be made clear, especially for young people. “A lot of people do it to make things more interesting,” Egan said. “It makes the game more exciting. You just have to figure out how to say this is entertainment.” If you or someone you know has a gambling addiction, call the National Council on Problem Gambling hotline: 1-800-522-4700. Disclosure: CNBC and Kalshi have a business relationship that includes customer acquisition and a minority investment.
